Why the Luckin Coffee Cold Brew Steep Troubles Staff

Luckin Coffee is launching a new drink, Big Watermelon Raw Coconut Cold Brew, across its stores on April 7. Before release, the product drew complaints from employees because the coffee liquid must be manually steeped for 18 minutes, with several quality-control steps attached. One pack of coffee powder yields only 4.5 cups, and stores are not allowed to stop selling it.

The step follows tea bases that already required 6-minute and 8-minute manual steeping, adding time to each order. When demand surges, staff can only ask customers to wait. Cold brew normally relies on low-temperature extraction over several hours, so compressing the process into a timed manual steep shifts the workload onto frontline workers, who say it slows store throughput.

Luckin Coffee is about to launch a new product, "Big Watermelon Raw Coconut Cold Brew," across its nationwide stores on April 7. However, before this product was even officially released, it had already sparked widespread complaints among employees. The reason is that its coffee liquid needs to be manually steeped for as long as 18 minutes, and the production process is cumbersome with many quality-control details, putting even more pressure on already busy frontline staff. What troubles them even more is that a single pack of coffee powder can only produce 4.5 cups of the finished product, and stores are not allowed to stop selling it. Once orders surge, they can only negotiate with customers to wait. This article compiles frontline employees' real feedback and operational details, presenting the "worker's dilemma" behind this new product.

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The end of March has quietly arrived, and Luckin has still maintained a steady pace of new releases in these final days, officially announcing its brand-new product "Big Watermelon Raw Coconut Cold Brew," and planning to officially start selling it nationwide next Monday, which is April 7.

Although there is still a full week before the official launch, as store employees gradually complete the latest round of operational assessments and come into contact with the recipe proportions and production process of this new product, the circle of Luckin workers has once again exploded, with complaints rising one after another, all aimed at the troublesome and cumbersome steps in the ingredient preparation process.

According to these employees' disclosures on social platforms, following the tea bases that previously required 6-minute and 8-minute manual steeping, the coffee liquid used in Luckin's upcoming new product also cannot escape the fate of manual steeping, and it takes even longer. The operation process also involves many quality-control requirements, greatly slowing down the efficiency of producing a single cup. The already heavy workload of the workers has undoubtedly been made even heavier.

It is understood that the cold brew solution designed by Luckin's R&D department for this new product only requires steeping the coffee powder for 18 minutes. This duration is clearly very different from the low-temperature slow extraction of several hours or even more than ten hours in the public perception. Although the final flavor is still unknown, this somewhat unconventional approach is indeed puzzling, and many employees have taken the opportunity to mock themselves, jokingly calling themselves "pour-over baristas."

Perhaps worried that outsiders would find it hard to understand their difficulties, Luckin's frontline employees simply recreated online the real scenes that may appear in stores a week later:

According to the company's operational standards, employees first need to print shelf-life labels, then put on disposable gloves to organize filter paper, pour coffee powder into a 5L cold brew pot, add direct drinking water and stir evenly, and immediately start an 18-minute countdown. During this period, employees can step away to handle other drinks. When the countdown ends, they must put on gloves again, filter out the cold brew liquid, transfer it to another clean pot, and finally place it in the refrigerator for cold storage.

Looking at this set of operating procedures alone, it does not seem particularly complicated, but the problem is that among Luckin's currently selling Light series, several products already require employees to manually extract tea. On ordinary days, if only one person is on shift, it is simply too busy to handle. Now another cold brew coffee that takes 18 minutes has been added. Just the timers alone probably require at least three, and afterward each one has to be washed one by one. No wonder workers are crying out that "the sky has fallen."

What puzzles them most is that the cold brew liquid made from one pack of coffee powder is only enough to produce 4.5 cups of the new product, and the kettle capacity is limited, so it simply cannot hold the amount of two packs of powder at the same time. If a store suddenly receives a surge of orders and customers order more than 5 cups of this new cold brew product at once, there will inevitably be a situation where supply falls short of demand.

What is even more helpless is that the company also explicitly stipulates that stores may not suspend sales during the new product launch period. In other words, when the pre-prepared cold brew liquid cannot meet production demand, staff can only communicate and negotiate with customers, asking them to wait patiently until the new coffee liquid is made. The consequences are naturally not hard to imagine: either customers cancel orders or complain, or the store's timeliness指标 is directly lowered.

Faced with this series of arrangements, besides posting complaints and listing management's "outrageous" operations, workers also did not forget to be creative and promptly made two very fitting memes to express their helpless feelings after reading the latest operational matters.

Image source: Xiaohongshu screenshot

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